Jelena Wassiljewna Obraszowa

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Jelena Obraszowa with Vladimir Putin at the award of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland in March 2000

Jelena Wassiljewna Obraszowa ( Russian Елена Васильевна Образцова , English transcription Elena Vasiliyevna Obraztsova ; born July 7, 1939 in Leningrad ; † January 12, 2015 in Leipzig ) was a Russian mezzo-soprano and special vocal talent.

Life

As a child, Jelena Obraszowa experienced the siege of Leningrad from August 1941 to January 1943. From 1954 to 1957 she studied at the Taganrog Music School and had her first appearances in the local theater. From 1957 to 1958 she studied at the Rostov-on-Don Music School .

In August 1958 Jelena Obraszowa graduated and became a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory . In 1963, Obraszowa was the first to win the newly created Glinka competition. In the same year she was invited to the Bolshoi Theater , where she made her debut as Marina Mnicek in Mussorgski's opera Boris Godunov . There she took further lessons from her Bolshoi colleague, the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya , who helped her to improve her breathing technique, which was still underdeveloped at the time. Her introduction to opera houses in Europe and the world was an appearance in the Salle Pleyel in Paris.

The highlights of her career in 1978 included appearances as Princess Eboli in Don Carlos under Herbert von Karajan at the Salzburg Festival and as Carmen in the Vienna State Opera under Carlos Kleiber .

At the Vienna State Opera she sang in a total of 31 performances, including Polina in Queen of Spades , Countess Visitova in War and Peace , Marina Mnicek in Boris Godunow , Amneris in Aida , Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana and Azucena in Il trovatore . Her last appearance there was in 1987 as Amneris .

On May 20, 1996, the independent, non-commercial Jelena Obraszowa Cultural Center was founded in Saint Petersburg . This center is active in the field of cultural and musical education and training.

On July 7, 2009, Obraszowa's 70th birthday was celebrated with a special performance by the Mikhailovsky Theater with ballet, opera and film excerpts as well as jazz and piano concerts.

Jelena Obraszowa expressed her support for the International Delphic Games . Greetings with their signature came to the III. Delphic Games 2009 in Jeju / South Korea , under the motto “In harmony with nature”, and for the IV. Delphic Youth Games 2011 in Johannesburg / South Africa , under the motto “Provoke, renew, inspire”.

Obraszowa died of heart failure on January 12, 2015 at the age of 75 in a hospital in Leipzig .

Political proximity to the Soviet regime

Obraszowa was considered a "system-loyal artist" all her life. In 1974 she and other Soviet artists denounced her teacher Galina Vishnevskaya and her husband, the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich , who had taken in the ostracized writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn in their house, in an open letter to the Soviet leadership.

Awards

Obraszowa received the following awards:

literature

  • Alexei Parin: Jelena Obraszowa. A Russian opera legend. Hollitzer, Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-99012-466-6 . (Contains a detailed compilation of the repertoire.)

Web links

Commons : Elena Vasiliyevna Obraztsova  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Yelena Obraztsova. All Music, accessed January 5, 2011 .
  2. ↑ Russian Образцова Елена Васильевна. (No longer available online.) Энциклопедия "Кругосвет", archived from the original on April 5, 2009 ; Retrieved January 5, 2011 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / slovari.yandex.ru
  3. ↑ Образцова Елена Васильевна. (No longer available online.) Международный Объединенный Биографический Центр, archived from the original on November 20, 2010 ; Retrieved January 5, 2011 .
  4. ↑ a b Vienna State Opera mourns the loss of Russian opera diva Jelena Obraszowa . In: Sputnik. January 12, 2015. Accessed January 15, 2015.
  5. ^ Website of the Jelena-Obraszowa-Kulturzentrum
  6. ↑ Larisa Doctorow: Home-grown diva. In: The St. Petersburg Times. July 10, 2009.
  7. ↑ Greeting from Jelena Obraszowa ( Memento from January 7, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) 2009. (PDF; 1.1 MB; English)
  8. ^ Johann Jahn, Wolf-Dieter Peter: On the death of Jelena Obraszowa. Podcast on the homepage of Bayerischer Rundfunk from January 13, 2015 (accessed on January 13, 2015).
  9. ↑ FAZ from January 13, 2015
  10. ↑ https://www.munzinger.de/search/portrait/jelena+obraszowa/0/17059.html
  11. ↑ Biography of Jelena Obraszowa on page Bolshoi Theater. Retrieved October 5, 2018 (Russian).
personal data
SURNAME Obraszowa, Jelena Wassiljewna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Образцова, Елена Васильевна (Russian spelling)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian opera singer
DATE OF BIRTH July 7, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Leningrad
DATE OF DEATH January 12, 2015
Place of death Leipzig